(Not) alone in the museum

Human experiences are highly sensitive towards social cues and art appreciation is no exception. In the present paper, we consider the role of social influence for aesthetic experiences. Specifically, we compared three experimental conditions varying implicit social cues (N = 533): Participants viewed a muted video of the expressionist painting “Tirol” by Franz Marc (1914) which either displayed no other visitors or two seemingly interested others in a fine arts museum setting. These others were either framed as having high (art history scholars) or low art expertise (computer science scholars). Our findings demonstrate that the mere seemingly interested behavior of other visitors increases observers’ more private aesthetic judgment (e.g., perceptions of liking, beauty, expressiveness, etc.) and their more outward engagement with an artwork (e.g., telling others, buying prints, etc.) – if these others are perceived as art experts. Thus, the present paper extends the sparse body of research on “the social” in art appreciation and highlights potentially positive effects other visitors can have on the museal aesthetic experience

Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive psychology · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Art Education and Development · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Psychology · Social Psychology